Prognosis for Unified Communications

Prognosis for Unified Communications provides a comprehensive monitoring solution for a wide range of unified communications environments, including Avaya, Cisco and Microsoft Skype for Business. In addition, the monitoring of various Session Border Controllers is also available.

Details of the various vendor products currently supported by Prognosis are provided in this part of the documentation.

Choose the Vendor

Common Information for all Vendors

Unified Communications Editions

Prognosis for Unified Communications is available in the two following editions:

  • 'Enterprise'

  • 'Service Provider'

These two editions provide Unified Communications monitoring solutions tailored for specific environments. The ''Enterprise' edition provides monitoring for a single Unified Communications network while the 'Service Provider' edition is tailored specifically for Managed Service Providers (MSP) that monitor multiple Unified Communications networks on behalf of other organizations.

The following table provides an overview of the features that are available with each 'Edition':

Features

Enterprise Edition

Service Provider Edition

Number of Prognosis servers

Unlimited

Unlimited

Number of monitored PBXs

Unlimited

Unlimited

Number of users

Unlimited

Unlimited

Multi-vendor UC ecosystems

(tick)

(tick)

Gateways, trunks, boards and ports monitoring

(tick)

(tick)

HTML5 mobile friendly interface

(tick)

(tick)

Searchable ecosystem

(tick)

(tick)

Voice Quality 360

(tick)

(tick)

Role-based secure access

(tick)

(tick)

Soft phone host metrics

(tick)

(tick)

IM and Presence

(tick)

(tick)

DMZ and Cloud deployment options

(tick)

(tick)

MOM and Ticketing integration

(tick)

(tick)

Customizable dashboard 'mashups'

(tick)

(tick)

Fully featured customizable Displays

(tick)

(tick)

Customizable alerts and thresholds

(tick)

(tick)

Windows Client

(tick)

(tick)

SNMP device monitoring

(tick)

(tick)

Prognosis platform solutions

(tick)

(tick)

Prognosis API

(tick)

(tick)

PConnect

(error)

(tick)

NAT Support

(error)

(tick)

Multi-tenancy

(error)

(tick)

Customer Portal

(error)

(tick)

Modules (1)



Unified Messaging

(tick)

(tick)

SIP Trunking

(tick)

(tick)

Reporting for UC/Contact Center

(tick)

(tick)

Path Insight

(tick)

(tick)

(1) Not all modules are automatically included with each Prognosis installation, please refer to your Prognosis Sales Manager for details.

Unified Communications License Enforcement

Prognosis uses license enforcement with the Unified Communications product range, this is based upon the number of users in the UC environment being monitored. If Prognosis is run without the correct Prognosis product(s) license, alerts will be raised once a day after the license has been exceeded.

Unless a new valid license is provided, the following actions will take effect:

  • After 14 days the Web Application will be disabled.

  • After 28 days the Prognosis Server will shut down. This will result in data no longer being collected and subsequent data loss.

Messages regarding license degradation will also be sent to the Prognosis wvlog file.

If license degradation alerts are received, please contact your IR account manager to organize a new license to cater for the increased number of endpoint users.

System Monitoring for Unified Communications

Prognosis for Unified Communications is multi-vendor software product which is designed to provide a comprehensive monitoring and management platform for Unified Communications (UC) environments. It does this by collecting data, filtering it as required and then presenting it in a 'user-friendly' format, all in 'real-time'. Additional functions allow for data to be collected into databases for further analysis and reporting, generating alerts when predefined conditions are exceeded, and automatically running commands to rectify system problems.

Prognosis comes with a wide range of records and collectors that are used to gather a vast amount of data from a range of supported vendor products. Prognosis also comes with a selection of pre-packaged Displays that provide logical easy-to-use graphical representations of this collected data. The Displays for Unified Communications environments can be accessed through the Navigation panels and the initial All PBXs Display of the All PBXs Display for Unified Communications. In addition, this data can also be viewed through the Displays in the Prognosis Windows Client which can be accessed through the initial Unified Communications and Collaboration Central Display. Either of these provide a good starting point to begin finding your way around Prognosis.

For details see the following sections:

Prognosis can be configured to collect large amounts of data from the Avaya Aura CM, Avaya CS1000 and/or Cisco networks. The impact of what is displayed, saved in databases or monitored with thresholds needs to be understood. The pre-packaged Displays, Thresholds and Databases have been developed to minimize any impact on the network and are designed to scale to multiple PBXs and clusters. However, a number of Displays include warnings if they have the potential to adversely impact on network performance. It is recommended to only use these Displays for short durations, in order to diagnose problems that may be severely impacting the Unified Communications environment.

MOS Calculations for Unified Communications

Prognosis provides Mean Opinion Score (MOS) values for monitored calls in a VoIP environment. To do this, Prognosisuses 2 different algorithms depending on the vendor:

Microsoft

The MOS rating is determined by an IR proprietary algorithm that factors in the applicable Codec being used by each Skype call. This MOS rating is then used by visual alarms in the various Prognosis Displays.

The Codecs used include:

Codec

Unacceptable

Poor Rating

Fair Rating

Good Rating

G.711

< 2.95

2.95 - 3.30

3.30 - 3.5

> 3.5

RTAudio

< 3.3

3.3 - 3.6

3.6 - 3.8

> 3.8

SilkWide

< 3.5

3.5 - 3.8

3.8 - 4.0

> 4.0

G.723 - Exchange UM

< 2.15

2.15 - 2.41

2.41 - 2.7

> 2.7

G.722/G.722.1

< 3.5

3.5 - 3.8

3.8 - 4.0

> 4.0

Siren

< 2.95

2.95 - 3.30

3.30 - 3.5

> 3.5

G.726

< 2.95

2.95 - 3.30

3.30 - 3.5

> 3.5

If a Codec is not in the above list, then the G.711 Codec will be assumed for the calculation.

All Other Vendors

Prognosis uses an algorithm based on the ITU-T E Model. The MOS values produced are compared to the ITU-T E-Model for varying latency or packet loss.

MOS Definition

The quality of a call carried over a particular telephony system is ultimately a subjective determination. In other words, someone has to listen to the voice sent across the network and express an opinion as to whether it is of acceptable quality. MOS ranging from 0 (worst) to 5 (best) is one such subjective measurement of voice quality. It is based upon ratings of call quality by a number of listeners who are read test sentences over the communications circuit. The arithmetic mean of the ratings is used to determine the MOS.

E-model from ITU-T

ITU-T (Telecommunication Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunication Union) published the G.107 recommendation giving the algorithm for the E-model as the common ITU-T Transmission Rating Model. The E-Model is a tool for estimating the user satisfaction of a narrowband, handset conversation, as perceived by the listener. It is used to predict how an average user would rate the voice quality of a phone call with known characterizing transmission parameters. The E-Model calculates the transmission rating factor (R-value), using the network impairment factors. Typical network impairment factors used in VoIP cable telephony are codecs, delay, jitter and packet loss. After computing the R-value based on the impairment factors, the R-value is converted into a MOS score. This computational model can be useful to transmission planners to help ensure that users will be satisfied with end-to-end transmission performance.

ITU-T G.113 also provides extra information relating to the equipment impairment factor (Ie) and packet-lost robustness factor (Bpl).

Full details of the ITU-T recommendations can be found on the ITU web site at: http://www.itu.int/publications/default.aspx

The Prognosis model for calculating MOS follows the ITU-T E Model with default parameters set as shown in the following table:

Nfor

Noise floor at the receive side

-64 dBmp

Nc

Circuit noise power from network

-70 dBm0p

SLR

Send Loudness Rating

8dB

RLR

Receive Loudness Rating

2dB

LSTR

Listener Sidetone Rating

18dB

Pr

Room Noise at the Receive Side

35 dB(A)

Ps

Room Noise at the Send Side

35 dB(A)

Ds

D-Value of Telephone, Send Side

3

STMR

Sidetone Masking Rating

15 dB

TELR

Talker Echo Loudness Rating

65 dB

qdu

Number of Quantization Distortion Units

1

WEPL

Weighted Echo Path Loss

110 dB

codec

Ie

Bpl

G.711 A-law

0

25.1

G.711 μ-law

0

25.1

G.729

10

19.0

G.729A

11

19.0

G.729AB

11

19.0

G.729B

10

19.0

Note that ITU has not defined the extension or technique for wideband code. Therefore, values for default parameters that correspond to G.711 are used for G.722, iLBC and OPUS calls for MOS calculations within Prognosis. Reporting using these parameters for wideband calls allows at least basic quality classifications to be carried out.

Theoretical Maximum MOS from E-Model

As described above, a set of default values for the various input parameters to E-Model are used. The only variables used for the MOS calculations are:

T – mean one-way delay

Ta – absolute delay

Tr – round-trip delay

Ppl - packet-lost probability

If all these parameters are set to zero, i.e. when there is simply no packet loss and no latency, the theoretical maximum MOS value for the various codecs are:

codec

Maximum MOS

G.711

4.41

G.729

4.14

G.729A

4.10

G.729AB

4.10

G.729B

4.14

ITU supplies a calculator for R-factor and MOS values, which can be found here: https://www.itu.int/ITU-T/2005-2008/com12/emodelv1/calcul.php. This calculator can be used to verify figures in the above tables 

Measurement of delay

Traditionally, in circuit switched networks, passive delay measures are estimated by looking for the echo reflected from the far-end hybrid. This is not possible within a VoIP network. The Prognosis model for calculating MOS estimates any passive delay as follows:

T = tenc + towtd + tdec

Tr = tenc + 2 * towtd + tdec

Ta = tenc + towtd + tdec

Where:

towtd is the one way transmission delay

tenc is the codec encoder delay set to (packetSize + 0.2*frameSize) + codecVariant

tdec is the decoding and jitter buffer delay set to (frameSize + jitter)

For the different codecs, values of codec encoder delay (tenc) for a 20ms packet size are given in the table below together with the default frame size:

Codec

FrameSize

codecVariant

tenc

G.711

0.125 (8kHz sample rate)

0

20ms

G.729

10

5ms

27ms

G.729A

10

5ms

27ms

G.729B

10

5ms

27ms

G.729AB

10

5ms

27ms

Using this estimation, the main input parameters to the MOS calculation are:

  • packet size

  • jitter

  • packet loss

  • latency

These values are read from:

  • CallDetailRecord and CallDetailRecordDiagnostic tables within the CDR database of Cisco CallManager

  • RTCP packets for Avaya Aura PBX

  • SNMP Traps for Avaya CS1000 PBX

  • VoIP tickets for Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise Communication Server

This model only accepts packet loss from 0 - 20% and latency from 0 - 500ms which are the same boundaries set up in the ITU-T E-Model. The range of acceptable jitter is 0 - 250ms.

MOS values from ITU-T E-Model and Prognosis

With this modified E-Model implementation, analysis has been carried out to ensure that MOS values from the original ITU-T E-Model and Prognosis with various latency and packet loss values still have a tight correlation. The following tables show the results for G.711 calls with varying latency and packet loss values.

MOS Values with varying Packet Loss

Packet loss %

ITU

IPTM

0.00

4.41

4.41

0.10

4.40

4.38

0.20

4.40

4.38

0.30

4.39

4.37

0.40

4.38

4.36

0.50

4.37

4.35

0.60

4.36

4.34

0.70

4.35

4.33

0.80

4.35

4.33

0.90

4.34

4.32

1.00

4.33

4.31

1.10

4.32

4.30

1.20

4.31

4.29

1.30

4.30

4.28

1.40

4.29

4.27

1.50

4.28

4.26

1.60

4.27

4.25

1.70

4.26

4.24

1.80

4.25

4.23

1.90

4.24

4.22

2.00

4.24

4.21

2.10

4.23

4.20

2.20

4.22

4.19

2.30

4.20

4.18

2.40

4.19

4.17

2.50

4.19

4.16

2.60

4.18

4.15

2.70

4.17

4.14

2.80

4.16

4.13

2.90

4.15

4.12

3.00

4.14

4.11

3.10

4.13

4.10

3.20

4.11

4.09

3.30

4.10

4.08

3.40

4.09

4.07

3.50

4.08

4.06

3.60

4.07

4.04

3.70

4.06

4.03

3.80

4.05

4.02

3.90

4.04

4.01

4.00

4.03

4.00

4.10

4.02

3.99

4.20

4.01

3.98

4.30

4.00

3.97

4.40

3.99

3.96

4.50

3.98

3.95

4.60

3.97

3.94

4.70

3.95

3.93

4.80

3.95

3.92

4.90

3.93

3.91

5.00

3.92

3.89


MOS values with varying Latency

Latency (ms)

ITU

IPTM

0

4.41

4.41

10

4.40

4.39

20

4.40

4.38

30

4.39

4.38

40

4.38

4.37

50

4.38

4.37

60

4.37

4.36

70

4.37

4.36

80

4.37

4.35

90

4.36

4.35

100

4.36

4.34

110

4.35

4.34

120

4.35

4.33

130

4.34

4.32

140

4.33

4.31

150

4.33

4.30

160

4.32

4.28

170

4.30

4.25

180

4.28

4.22

190

4.26

4.18

200

4.22

4.14

210

4.19

4.09

220

4.14

4.04

230

4.09

3.99

240

4.05

3.93

250

3.99

3.88

260

3.94

3.82

270

3.89

3.77

280

3.83

3.71

290

3.77

3.66

300

3.72

3.61

310

3.67

3.55

320

3.61

3.50

330

3.56

3.45

340

3.51

3.40

350

3.45

3.35

360

3.40

3.30

370

3.35

3.26

380

3.31

3.21

390

3.27

3.17

400

3.12

3.12

410

3.17

3.08

420

3.13

3.04

430

3.08

3.00

440

3.05

2.96

450

3.01

2.93

460

2.97

2.89

470

2.93

2.86

480

2.90

2.82

490

2.86

2.82

500

2.83

2.82


MOS values with varying Jitter

A table and a graph showing the MOS values calculated using the Prognosis model for G.711 calls with varying Jitter is also included.

Jitter (ms)

IPTM

0

4.41

10

4.39

20

4.38

30

4.38

40

4.37

50

4.37

60

4.36

70

4.36

80

4.35

90

4.35

100

4.34

110

4.34

120

4.33

130

4.33

140

4.32

150

4.30

160

4.28

170

4.26

180

4.22

190

4.19

200

4.14

210

4.10

220

4.05

230

4.00

240

3.94

250

3.89

Choose the Product

Network Devices

The Prognosis Network Devices component provides monitoring for the following devices:

  • Cisco® PSTN (standalone) Gateways
    That is, those Gateways that are not used in conjunction with Cisco Unified Communications Manager or where Gateways are added as SIP trunks. This monitoring includes the status of the various PSTN interfaces and SIP traffic statistics.

  • Audiocodes Gateways
    Prognosis can be set up to provide basic CPU, memory and hardware environment statistics on various AudioCodes gateways.

  • Cisco IOS Routers
    Prognosis can be set up to provide basic CPU, memory and hardware environment statistics on various Cisco IOS devices.

For details see the following sections:

Session Border Controllers

Session Border Controllers (SBC) are devices or applications that are used to control real-time session traffic at the signaling, call control, and packet layers as they cross borders between IP networks or between network segments. They admit sessions and, where necessary, reject sessions in order to protect the network from 'denial of service' (DoS) attacks and sudden spikes in congestion. A session is any real-time voice, video, presence, instant messaging or multimedia collaboration session using IP session-layer signaling protocols, such as SIP or H.323. In addition, SBCs may also be used to perform a range of call-control functions that help to reduce the load on other devices within the IP environment, these might include; Quality of Service (QoS) functions, policy-based routing and signaling protocol interworking.

SBC monitoring provides System Administrators easy access to see the status of each SBC device in the environment together with details of the real-time session traffic that is being processed. At present the following SBC vendor devices are supported:

  • Oracle SBCs

  • Avaya Session Border Controller for Enterprise

  • Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) SBCs

  • Ribbon devices

  • AudioCodes Mediant SBC models.

For details of the specific vendor models that are currently supported, please go to the Supported Products for Collaborate.

For details see the following topics:

Syslog Messages

Syslog is a widely used standard for message logging. It is used for computer management and security auditing as well as for general information, analysis and debugging messages. Syslog is supported by a wide variety of devices across multiple platforms and has become the standard logging solution on various systems.

The Prognosis SYSLOG record is used to hold the messages received by the Syslog Collector. The Syslog Collector (irsyslogcol.exe) is located within the Prognosis Monitoring server and is used to collect Syslog messages containing status and diagnostic information from monitored devices. If the environment consists of multiple Prognosis Monitoring servers, then for scalability, the collection of Syslog messages should be spread across all servers. To do this, each Prognosis Monitoring server should be set up to receive Syslog messages only for the systems being directly monitored by that server.

Prognosis uses 'Device Matching' to automatically tag messages with details of the device that they came from; i.e. Device name, Cluster name, Vendor, Type, Customer and Site. This is done automatically for some vendor devices that Prognosis is monitoring, e.g. Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM), Cisco Unity Connection (CUC) and SBC. 'Device Matching' populates the SYSLOG record with this information from the following sources:

  • PrognosisNode (PNODES) record

  • CallManagerGateway (CMGATEWY) record

  • CISCODEV Configuration

  • SBC Configuration

‘Device Matching’ is only performed for the devices known to the current Prognosis Monitoring Server, i.e. if the Syslog messages from a device are sent to a different Prognosis Monitoring Server instead of the server currently monitoring the device, then automatic device matching will not be possible. Explicit specification will need to be done. As mentioned above, it is recommended that each Prognosis Monitoring Server to be set up to receive Syslog messages only for the devices being directly monitored by that server. This will ensure that device matching is carried out as well as spreading the load created by Syslog across different monitoring servers.

For other devices, the MAP-DEVICE statement in the SYSLOG Configuration can be used to manually specify the information, or overwrite the information from the automatic device matching, for each message based on the originating IP address.

If there are multiple devices associated with the same IP address, the DeviceName field will be populated with the text 'Multiple Devices Matched'. This indicates that the source of the Syslog message cannot be identified due to an IP address conflict. If the conflicting devices are from the same vendor, the Vendor field will be populated. The other fields will be reset to blank.

For details see the following sections:

Choose the Product

Avaya Aura Communication Manager

The Avaya Aura® architecture provides a core IP telephony platform that supports Unified Communications and Contact Center solutions for midsize to large enterprises. The Avaya Aura Communication Manager (AACM) product is one of the core components of the Avaya Aura VoIP architecture.

Avaya Aura System Manager
Avaya Aura System Manager is a browser-based console that provides a central administration tool for multiple instances of Avaya Aura Session Manager. It has been designed so that in the future it can be used to manage all Avaya Aura components. For details see Avaya Aura System and Session Manager.

Avaya Aura Session Manager
Avaya Aura Session Manager is a SIP routing, registration and integration tool that forms the core component of the Avaya Aura IP telephony solution. It is used to integrate all of the SIP entities, including Avaya Aura Communication Manager and Avaya SIP phones, across an entire corporate network. For details see Avaya Aura System and Session Manager.

Avaya Aura Communication Manager
Avaya Aura Communication Manager is the software application that powers the Avaya Aura IP Telephony and Unified Communications solutions. It can be deployed as an IP PBX or feature server supporting a SIP-only environment, or as an evolution server supporting both SIP and non-SIP environments. It sits at the top of a distributed network of Avaya Media Gateways and provides centralized call control for all types of analog, digital, and IP-based communications traffic.

Prognosis provides monitoring for Avaya Aura Communication Manager environments and includes a range of specifically designed pre-packaged Displays, Databases and Thresholds.

For details see the following sections:

Prognosis also provides monitoring for Avaya Aura Call Center Elite as part of the Prognosis for Contact Centers product range.

Avaya Aura System and Session Manager

The Avaya Aura® architecture provides a core IP telephony platform that supports Unified Communications and Contact Center solutions for midsize to large enterprises. The Avaya Aura System Manager and Session Manager (AASM) products are two of the core components of the Avaya Aura VoIP architecture.

Avaya Aura System Manager
Avaya Aura System Manager is a browser based console that provides a central administration tool for multiple instances of Avaya Aura Session Manager. It has been designed so that in the future it can be used to manage all Avaya Aura components.

Avaya Aura Session Manager
Avaya Aura Session Manager is a SIP routing, registration and integration tool that forms the core component of the Avaya Aura IP telephony solution. It is used to integrate all of the SIP entities, including Avaya Aura Communication Manager and Avaya SIP phones, across an entire corporate network.

Avaya Aura Communication Manager
Avaya Aura Communication Manager is the software application that powers the Avaya Aura IP Telephony and Unified Communications solutions. It can be deployed as an IP PBX or feature server supporting a SIP-only environment, or as an evolution server supporting both SIP and non-SIP environments. It sits at the top of a distributed network of Avaya Media Gateways and provides centralised call control for all types of analog, digital, and IP-based communications traffic. See the Avaya Aura Communication Manager for details.

Prognosis provides monitoring for Avaya Aura Session and System Manager environments and includes a range of specifically designed pre-packaged Displays, Databases and Thresholds.

For details see the following sections:

Avaya IP Office

Avaya IP Office™ is a voice and data communications system designed for small to medium size businesses, ranging from single locations to multi-site networks. It provides a complete unified communications solution for telephony, voice mail, email and instant messaging functions.

Prognosis provides monitoring for Avaya IP Office (IPO) environments which includes; availability, system performance, phone inventory and alerts.

For details see the following sections:

Avaya Modular Messaging

Avaya Modular Messaging (AMM) is a messaging solution that is used to take incoming voice calls, emails or fax messages and store these into mailboxes for later access. These messages can then be delivered through access devices that are already in use, such as any phone, PC interface or Web Client.

Prognosis provides monitoring for Avaya Modular Messaging environments and includes a range of specifically designed pre-packaged Displays, Databases and Thresholds.

For details see the following sections:

Session Border Controllers

Session Border Controllers (SBC) are devices or applications that are used to control real-time session traffic at the signaling, call control, and packet layers as they cross borders between IP networks or between network segments. They admit sessions and, where necessary, reject sessions in order to protect the network from 'denial of service' (DoS) attacks and sudden spikes in congestion. A session is any real-time voice, video, presence, instant messaging or multimedia collaboration session using IP session-layer signaling protocols, such as SIP or H.323. In addition, SBCs may also be used to perform a range of call-control functions that help to reduce the load on other devices within the IP environment, these might include; Quality of Service (QoS) functions, policy-based routing and signaling protocol interworking.

SBC monitoring provides System Administrators easy access to see the status of each SBC device in the environment together with details of the real-time session traffic that is being processed. At present the following SBC vendor devices are supported:

  • Oracle SBCs

  • Avaya Session Border Controller for Enterprise

  • Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) SBCs

  • Ribbon devices

  • AudioCodes Mediant SBC models.

For details of the specific vendor models that are currently supported, please go to the Supported Products for Collaborate.

For details see the following topics:

Choose the Product

Cisco Emergency Responder

Cisco® Emergency Responder (CER) is used in conjunction with the emergency 911 functionality that is provided with Cisco Unified Communication Manager. Using a real-time location-tracking database and enhanced routing capabilities Cisco Emergency Responder ensures that the origin of 911 calls can be determined and calls are directed to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) based on the caller's location.

Prognosis provides monitoring for Cisco Emergency Responder and includes a range of specifically designed pre-packaged Displays, Databases and Thresholds.

For details see the following sections:

Cisco Expressway

Cisco® Expressway™ is used for Mobile and Remote Access (MRA), Video calls, as well as Cisco Spark and Microsoft Skype for Business integration. It offers a simple, highly secure access to all collaboration workloads, including video, voice, content, IM, and presence, outside of corporate firewalls.

Prognosis offers a solution that will monitor the health of Cisco Expressway including such items as:

  • Expressway System Unit metrics

  • Resource Usage for Calls and Registrations

  • Expressway Zones and Zone Peers

  • Expressway System Alarms Raised

  • Expressway Alternative devices

  • B2BUA Call components (includes B2BUA Media Streams and B2BUA Media Channels)

  • Edge, Traversal, Non-Traversal and Cloud calls (includes Call Hops and Call Links)

Configuration for Cisco Expressway on the Prognosis Monitoring Server can be carried out through the Web Application (preferred option), or if necessary, it can be completed manually using various configuration files in either the Web Application or Windows Client.

For details see the following sections:

Cisco Meeting Server

Cisco® Meeting Server (formerly Acano®) is an on-premise collaboration solution that is designed to bring various video, audio and web conferencing components together into a single platform. This simplifies the process of users joining meetings as they are able to choose the particular device or application to connect with. It is designed to work with Cisco communication devices and other on-premise third-party infrastructure.

Prognosis provides support for Cisco Meeting Server (CMS) which includes the monitoring of system health, component status and call information.

For details see the following sections:

Cisco TelePresence Management Suite

Cisco TelePresence® Management Suite (TMS), consists of a range of products developed by Cisco Systems that are designed to link two physically separated conference rooms together. This creates a conference experience that feels as if local and remote participants are in the same room. The product range offers features including up to three 1080p flat panel displays, special tables, microphones, speakers, cameras, collaboration interfaces and lighting.

For details see the following sections:

Session Border Controllers

Session Border Controllers (SBC) are devices or applications that are used to control real-time session traffic at the signaling, call control, and packet layers as they cross borders between IP networks or between network segments. They admit sessions and, where necessary, reject sessions in order to protect the network from 'denial of service' (DoS) attacks and sudden spikes in congestion. A session is any real-time voice, video, presence, instant messaging or multimedia collaboration session using IP session-layer signaling protocols, such as SIP or H.323. In addition, SBCs may also be used to perform a range of call-control functions that help to reduce the load on other devices within the IP environment, these might include; Quality of Service (QoS) functions, policy-based routing and signaling protocol interworking.

SBC monitoring provides System Administrators easy access to see the status of each SBC device in the environment together with details of the real-time session traffic that is being processed. At present the following SBC vendor devices are supported:

  • Oracle SBCs

  • Avaya Session Border Controller for Enterprise

  • Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) SBCs

  • Ribbon devices

  • AudioCodes Mediant SBC models.

For details of the specific vendor models that are currently supported, please go to the Supported Products for Collaborate.

For details see the following topics:

Cisco Unified Communications Manager

Cisco® Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) software is the call processing component of a Cisco Unified Communications environment. It is a scalable, distributable and highly available call-processing solution for enterprise organizations.

Prognosis provides monitoring for Cisco UCM environments and includes a range of specifically designed pre-packaged Displays, Databases and Thresholds.

For details see the following sections:

Cisco Unified Computing System

Most data center environments today are set up using a variety of individual components that require System Administrators to spend much of their time on basic integration tasks. The Cisco Unified Computing System™ (UCS) is a data center platform that unites computing, network, storage access and virtualization into a single cohesive system that reduces costs and increases business agility.

The Cisco UCS (CUSC) environment can be made up of a number of integrated components:

  • Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects

  • Cisco UCS Blade Server Chassis

  • Cisco UCS Fabric Extenders

  • Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers

  • Cisco UCS C-Series Rack-Mount Servers

  • Cisco UCS Network Adaptor

  • Cisco UCS Manager

(Diagram courtesy of Cisco Systems)

Prognosis provides the tools necessary to monitor the Cisco Unified Communications applications along with the Cisco UCS B-Series and Cisco UCS C-Series hardware.

For details see the following sections:

Cisco Unified Presence

The Cisco® Unified Presence (CUP) platform is an important part of the Cisco Unified Communications environment. It collects user availability data based on desktop, mobile, telephony and calendar information. In addition, it also collects information regarding user communication capabilities, such as the capability to support voice, video, instant messaging and web collaboration. This information can be used in conjunction with Cisco Unified Personal Communicator and Cisco Unified Communications Manager to improve productivity by helping users connect with colleagues more efficiently by determining the most effective means for collaborative communication.

Prognosis provides monitoring for Cisco UP environments and includes a range of specifically designed pre-packaged Displays, Databases and Thresholds.

For details see the following sections:

Cisco Unified SIP Proxy

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Prognosis 11.7

Cisco® Unified SIP Proxy (CUSP) is a high-performance, highly scalable SIP proxy server that helps enterprises aggregate their Contact Center (CC) and Unified Communications (UC) Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) elements into a centralized architecture to simplify and improve the flexibility of their network. Cisco Unified SIP Proxy aggregates SIP-based network elements and acts as a stateless routing intermediary between them to reduce call routing combinations. Each element can route its calls or sessions to Cisco Unified SIP Proxy which will properly route the call to the appropriate SIP-based element in the network.

By intelligently forwarding call routing requests between call-control elements, Cisco Unified SIP Proxy provides the means for routing sessions within enterprise and service provider networks. The latest versions of 9.1.x and 10.x provide important new features not available in previous versions such as it runs in a virtualized OS environment, like VMware, on the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS) servers and includes the Cisco UCS E-Series server modules. 

Prognosis offers a solution that will monitor the health of Cisco Unified SIP Proxy including such items as:

  • CUSP Alerts and Traps
  • CUSP Connections
  • CUSP Licenses
  • CUSP Peg Counting Log
  • CUSP Call Counts
  • CUSP Status
For details see the following sections:

Cisco Unity Connection

Cisco Unity® Connection (CUC) is a messaging platform that integrates messaging and voice recognition components to provide users with an enhanced level of communications through IP phones and PC's. The functions provided enable voice commands to be used to place calls and listen to messages in "hands-free" mode and check voice messages. Other features include; intelligent routing, customizable call-screening and message-notification options.

Monitoring of Cisco Unity Connection by Prognosis is achieved by utilizing the Unity Connections voicemail port data.

For details see the following sections:

Network Devices

The Prognosis Network Devices component provides monitoring for the following devices:

  • Cisco® PSTN (standalone) Gateways
    That is, those Gateways that are not used in conjunction with Cisco Unified Communications Manager or where Gateways are added as SIP trunks. This monitoring includes the status of the various PSTN interfaces and SIP traffic statistics.

  • Audiocodes Gateways
    Prognosis can be set up to provide basic CPU, memory and hardware environment statistics on various AudioCodes gateways.

  • Cisco IOS Routers
    Prognosis can be set up to provide basic CPU, memory and hardware environment statistics on various Cisco IOS devices.

For details see the following sections:

Syslog Messages

Syslog is a widely used standard for message logging. It is used for computer management and security auditing as well as for general information, analysis and debugging messages. Syslog is supported by a wide variety of devices across multiple platforms and has become the standard logging solution on various systems.

The Prognosis SYSLOG record is used to hold the messages received by the Syslog Collector. The Syslog Collector (irsyslogcol.exe) is located within the Prognosis Monitoring server and is used to collect Syslog messages containing status and diagnostic information from monitored devices. If the environment consists of multiple Prognosis Monitoring servers, then for scalability, the collection of Syslog messages should be spread across all servers. To do this, each Prognosis Monitoring server should be set up to receive Syslog messages only for the systems being directly monitored by that server.

Prognosis uses 'Device Matching' to automatically tag messages with details of the device that they came from; i.e. Device name, Cluster name, Vendor, Type, Customer and Site. This is done automatically for some vendor devices that Prognosis is monitoring, e.g. Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM), Cisco Unity Connection (CUC) and SBC. 'Device Matching' populates the SYSLOG record with this information from the following sources:

  • PrognosisNode (PNODES) record

  • CallManagerGateway (CMGATEWY) record

  • CISCODEV Configuration

  • SBC Configuration

‘Device Matching’ is only performed for the devices known to the current Prognosis Monitoring Server, i.e. if the Syslog messages from a device are sent to a different Prognosis Monitoring Server instead of the server currently monitoring the device, then automatic device matching will not be possible. Explicit specification will need to be done. As mentioned above, it is recommended that each Prognosis Monitoring Server to be set up to receive Syslog messages only for the devices being directly monitored by that server. This will ensure that device matching is carried out as well as spreading the load created by Syslog across different monitoring servers.

For other devices, the MAP-DEVICE statement in the SYSLOG Configuration can be used to manually specify the information, or overwrite the information from the automatic device matching, for each message based on the originating IP address.

If there are multiple devices associated with the same IP address, the DeviceName field will be populated with the text 'Multiple Devices Matched'. This indicates that the source of the Syslog message cannot be identified due to an IP address conflict. If the conflicting devices are from the same vendor, the Vendor field will be populated. The other fields will be reset to blank.

For details see the following sections:

Choose the Product

Microsoft Skype for Business Server

Microsoft® Skype™ for Business Server (SfB) is an enterprise level communications solution that brings together various forms of communication into a single interface. The functions provided by Skype for Business include; instant messaging and presence, conferencing and VoIP telephony. These functions are provided within an organization, between organizations and with external users on the public internet or with standard phones on the PSTN as well as SIP trunking.

Prognosis provides monitoring for Skype for Business environments and includes a range of specifically designed pre-packaged Displays, Databases and Thresholds.

For details see the following sections:

Choose the Product

Session Border Controllers

Session Border Controllers (SBC) are devices or applications that are used to control real-time session traffic at the signaling, call control, and packet layers as they cross borders between IP networks or between network segments. They admit sessions and, where necessary, reject sessions in order to protect the network from 'denial of service' (DoS) attacks and sudden spikes in congestion. A session is any real-time voice, video, presence, instant messaging or multimedia collaboration session using IP session-layer signaling protocols, such as SIP or H.323. In addition, SBCs may also be used to perform a range of call-control functions that help to reduce the load on other devices within the IP environment, these might include; Quality of Service (QoS) functions, policy-based routing and signaling protocol interworking.

SBC monitoring provides System Administrators easy access to see the status of each SBC device in the environment together with details of the real-time session traffic that is being processed. At present the following SBC vendor devices are supported:

  • Oracle SBCs

  • Avaya Session Border Controller for Enterprise

  • Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) SBCs

  • Ribbon devices

  • AudioCodes Mediant SBC models.

For details of the specific vendor models that are currently supported, please go to the Supported Products for Collaborate.

For details see the following topics:

Choose the Product

Path Insight

This feature is an add-on facility for Prognosis, it provides network path insight functionality through a third-party solution. It uses SNMP read-only access to collect the required information from the switches, routers and gateways being monitored. This feature is available across the Avaya, Skype for Business and Cisco vendor products but only through the Prognosis Web Application.

The following details provide a brief overview of the Path Insight product. However, further details can be obtained from the Prognosis Path Insight User Guide.

Prerequisites

A minimum version of Path Insight R9080 is required for Prognosis 11.7. 

Installation and Configuration

To enable this feature:

Contact the Prognosis Sales team in order to obtain the Path Insight solution installer and full instructions.

Run the Path Insight installation wizard.

Using a text editor open the Web.config file, which is located in the following folder path:

Prognosis\WebUI\IIS\Web.config

In the <configuration>/<appsettings> section, add the following entries:

<add key="EnablePathInsight" value="true"/>
<add key="PathInsightUrl" value="http://<ip-address>:<port>"/>

Where:

<ip-address>

IP address of the machine where the Path Insight solution has been installed. This may be the same machine as the Prognosis server.

<port>

Port number where the Path Insight Web service is running. Default 8084.

Close and save the file.

Access

After the above installation and configuration steps have been completed, a Network link should now be included in the title bar at the top of the Prognosis Web interface.


Click the Network link to open the Prognosis Path Insight dashboard.

The various tabs along the top of the dashboard open further screens that provide a wide range of network path data.

Tab

Description

Map

Displays a user customized map of the monitored network.

Path

Provides the ability to view a call path from one IP address to another.

Gremlins

Provides a list of what happened on the network over a selected time period.

Phones

Displays a detailed list of each phone interface.

Assessment

Total VoIP assessment of all interfaces.

MOS

View MOS scores to and from network devices.

Devices

Main device list.

Favorites

Provides a list of favorite interfaces.

Issues

View details of interfaces that have exceeded set utilization and error rate thresholds.

Health

View overall network usage and health statistics.

Top-10

View top interfaces on the network that have the highest utilization and error rates.

WAN

Displays a list of WAN interfaces on the network.

Interfaces

Displays a list of interfaces on the network that are not operational or are half-duplex.

Tools

Provides the ability to locate IP and MAC addresses on the network.

Choose the Product

Session Border Controllers

Session Border Controllers (SBC) are devices or applications that are used to control real-time session traffic at the signaling, call control, and packet layers as they cross borders between IP networks or between network segments. They admit sessions and, where necessary, reject sessions in order to protect the network from 'denial of service' (DoS) attacks and sudden spikes in congestion. A session is any real-time voice, video, presence, instant messaging or multimedia collaboration session using IP session-layer signaling protocols, such as SIP or H.323. In addition, SBCs may also be used to perform a range of call-control functions that help to reduce the load on other devices within the IP environment, these might include; Quality of Service (QoS) functions, policy-based routing and signaling protocol interworking.

SBC monitoring provides System Administrators easy access to see the status of each SBC device in the environment together with details of the real-time session traffic that is being processed. At present the following SBC vendor devices are supported:

  • Oracle SBCs

  • Avaya Session Border Controller for Enterprise

  • Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) SBCs

  • Ribbon devices

  • AudioCodes Mediant SBC models.

For details of the specific vendor models that are currently supported, please go to the Supported Products for Collaborate.

For details see the following topics:




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